Business Finds New Religion in Business Process Management

I have found a new religion and it involves you, Brother. Don't you sometimes get that feeling when someone is telling you how to run your company? Like it is some sort of feng shui project, move a desk and all will be well me old mucker.

I have often chastised new ideas myself only to find them to be quite helpful - not all of them, some of them, so you see I'm still quite sceptical. Then someone told me about Business Protocol Management, to which I replied "but that's just Business Protocol Re-engineering re-engineered isn't it?"

Yes, kind of, was the answer. It involves six separate functions aimed at making your company more streamlined and focused as if each department was a functioning part of a car's engine. You wouldn't put any old part in an engine, or keep a piece hat is completely worthless or increases fuel consumption.

With that in mind, I started taking a little more interest. The areas covered are vision, design, modelling, execution, monitoring, and optimisation. Which all sounds simply enough. these are all viable areas that can encompass the company mission statement right through to reporting of our targets and how to make better use of the results gleamed.

It was then suggested then I invite a BPM company into my own to have a look around and offer a report on where the processes in my company are at greatest risk of being a problem, where they work well and which processes could either be combined or split to offer better performance and of course, offer company profitability.

This is one of the casualties of an industry left over from the 1990s. The feeling that BPM is an overhead rather than a realistic tool to aid a business - whether it is ill or not. But how else do you find out that your company is sick? Just wait for your competitor to overtake and gain on market share because they sorted out their business processes more objectively and faster than you did?

It's fair to say that quite a lot of business advice is old hat and should be well known. However today the advancement of technology occurs at such a speed, that processes in business can become redundant or be replaced by another faster more efficient method overnight. Freeing up staff, money and work hours for another project with the assistance of BPM seems the smart thing to do.